The End of All Things [Obi-Wan Kenobi, G] (Reply)

Title: The End of All Things Author: jedi_emRating: G Word count: 399 Prompt: PT, Obi-Wan: His breakdown behind the door to a storage compartment on Padme's ship prior to his battle with Anakin on Mustafar.Characters: Obi-Wan, mentions of Anakin and Padmé Summary: Obi-Wan ponders his own guilt Author's Note: I'm treading familiar ground here, so I hope this doesn't come off as too repetitive for those of you who have been following my untitled post-RotS ficlet series. Oh, and yes, the title definitely was inspired by a line from The Lord of the Rings.

The compartment door slides shut with the motion of his hand and an ominous dread begins to pool low in his stomach. He can sense Padmé’s distress keenly in the Force, but even that provides little distraction. For the first time all day, Obi-Wan has nothing to do but think about everything he’s done wrong.

**

There had been a change in Anakin after Tatooine, after Geonosis. After Naboo. He hadn’t commented on it at the time, of course. Anakin had had his new prosthetic arm to deal with and, Obi-Wan had thought, a rather considerable and obvious infatuation with Senator Padmé Amidala to expunge. Obi-Wan had trusted that the young Senator would set the situation with his apprentice to right.

He’d never even considered that Padmé had become as irrational as he in her own love for Anakin.

**

Even closing his eyes affords him no reprieve. Whether it’s the most recent visions of his former Padawan mercilessly cutting down fellow Jedi, or the remembrance of a small boy in need of the kind of guidance and love that had just been taken so suddenly from him, it makes no difference. Each memory, each thought brings only fresh guilt, layer after layer until his head aches with it.

**

The acknowledgment in Padmé’s eyes had almost been a sweet relief. The way she’d cast her gaze down toward her midriff, the way she’d run her hand over its swell – these gestures had been answer enough. He found a sad comfort in her unspoken admission.

He’d known in that moment that she would go to Anakin. And that, in so going, she would lead the three of them to the end of all things.

**

For the first time in his entire life, Obi-Wan wishes he could simply run away.

Guilt and regret, love and grief, emotions from a life that should have been different from this one. He’d told Yoda that he should have fallen to the Zabrak on Naboo, that if he’d only died alongside Qui-Gon, Anakin would never have been taken from his home, would never have become a Jedi. But now he wonders if even that would have prevented this reckoning.

As the tears rise in his eyes, as he realizes he is helpless to stop them, he wonders if he can really still call himself a Jedi. He wonders if he ever should have.